long life and a great means to promote it;" and again, "A principal cause of our internal consumption, or spontaneous wasting, lies in the continual circulation of the blood. He who has a hundred pulsations in a minute may be wasted far more quickly than he who has only 50. Those therefore whose pulse is always quick, and in whom every trifling agitation of the mind, or every additional drop of wine, increases the motion of the heart are unfortunate candidates for longevity, since their whole life is a continual fever.”

Intemperance acts injuriously on the human system in preventing the organs of restoration from performing their functions in a healthy manner. Those organs which have for their object the reparation of waste, are among the most important of those which compose the human frame. Thousands of atoms of waste are being continually separated from the body, whilst their place is taken up with new and more appropriate matter. Lavoiser, the celebrated French chemist states, that the skin alone, during every twenty-four hours, parts with twenty ounces of useless matter. To this important source of waste may be added that of the alimentary canal and various organs of excretion, not omitting also the impure air which is continually being emitted from the lungs. This large separation of useless matter indicates the necessity of a continual supply of fresh nourishment. The system otherwise would be liable to premature dissolution or decay. To effect this restoration, the reparative organs must be in a healthy condition. Derangement of the digestive functions in particular is inimical to healthy restoration. The lungs, the heart, the liver, &c., have each their separate functions, and contribute their appropriate share towards restoring the waste of the system. Derangement then of any, or all of these functions is more or less injurious to health by preventing those processes which are essential to its continuance.

Intemperance, in two ways, injures the human system in respect to the subject under consideration,

1st. In preventing the effectual separation of old and useless matter, and 2nd, In the new matter not being possessed of the healthy nature essential to proper restoration. In the one case, the system becomes loaded with matter

not possessing vitality, which consequently diminishes from its self-preserving powers; in the other, particles of crude matter are lodged in the system, and are injurious in their consequences in proportion to their unfitness to supply nutrition.

The loss of vital energy or power forms a great source of disease and mortality. Those who have been accustomed to live freely invariably fall an easy prey to the attacks of disease. With such persons the slightest injury is frequently attended with the most serious results. The vital functions are unable to perform their accustomed labours, and consequently the vis naturæ is incapable of resisting the effects either of internal or external injuries. Thus the slightest cold, or comparatively trifling physical injury, is in general, attended with danger, and often with loss of life. In some inebriate cases, the principle of vitality is so small, that it is suddenly extinguished by little more than ordinary exertion, or exposure to unusual heat or cold; and even, as has not unfrequently happened, by simple indulgence in a glass of cold water.

The substance of the following remarks not very long ago went the round of the public papers. Medical men of experience in the metropolis are familiar with the fact that confirmed beer drinkers in London can scarcely scratch their fingers without risk of their lives. A copious London beer drinker is all one vital part. He wears his heart upon his sleeve, bare to a death-wound, even from a rusty nail or the claw of a cat. The worst patients brought into the metropolitan hospitals are those apparently fine models of health, strength, and soundness, the London draymen. It appears that when one of these receives a serious injury, it is always necessary to amputate, in order to give the patient the most distant chance of life. The draymen have the unlimited privilege of the brewer's cellar. Sir Astley Cooper, on one occasion, was called to a drayman, a powerful, fresh-coloured, healthy looking man, who had suffered an injury in his finger from a small splinter of a stave. Suppuration had taken place in the wound, which appeared but of a trifling description. This distinguished surgeon, as usual, opened the small abscess with his lancet. Upon retiring, however, he ascertained that he had forgotten his lancet-case. Returning to recover it, he found his patient in a dying state.

In a few minutes, or at most, in a few hours, the unfortunate man was a corpse. Every medical man in London, concludes the writer of this statement, above all things, dreads a beer-drinker for his patient in a surgical case.

The same subject is intimately connected with the popular notion that intoxicating liquors impart to the human system a power to resist noxious influences. Among these may be included vicissitudes of climate, such as extremes in heat and cold, local stagnations and exhalations; and in particular such disorders as are popularly supposed to be connected with or conveyed by some peculiar state of the atmosphere. Medical men have expressed various opinions on this subject, and strong recommendations to the use of spirituous liquors, under these circumstances, have not unfrequently been published. It is a fortunate circumstance, however, that investigation and experiments have shown the utter fallacy of these views. A few opinions of this nature are now submitted to the consideration of the reader. Fifteen physicians in the city of New York unite in the following testimony:"From observation derived from hospital, as well as private practice, we are convinced that alcoholic drinks do not operate as a preventive of epidemic diseases, but on the contrary, that they are often an exciting cause. A large proportion of the adult subjects of epidemic diseases, are intemperate, and among these is disease likely

* In a popular publication, a remarkable instance of this kind is recorded, in confirmation of the above case. "Some forty years ago, there flourished a London drayman of huge proportions, a regular beer bibber, known by the name of Big Ben. Ben was reckoned one of the strongest men within the bills of mortality, and he was occasionally seen showing off as second in those prize boxing matches which used to delight our moral and intelligent ancestors. When stripped of his upper garments, and engaged in the attitudes of this brutalizing sport, seldom or never had there been exhibited a frame so robust, or one which promised better to endure the shocks which might assail it. There stands, you would have said, "an invulnerable giant⚫ death will certainly find it no easy matter to level him." Yet for all this apparent hearty strength, Ben was brought down by an injury which would not have scathed a child. One day his hand received a slight graze from the wheel of a passing carriage on the crowded street-the skin was only ruffled. Ben wiped away the starting blood, and thought no more of the matter: in one week, thereafter, Big Ben was in his grave.

to be fatal." And again, "The tone of the nervous system being impaired by the (frequent moderate) use of intoxicating liquors, the constitution thus becomes more susceptible to the impression of all noxious agents. Ardent spirits, remarks Dr. L. Belden, " is to be ranked among the worst class of exciting causes of epidemic and pestilential diseases; and those maladies are the most dangerous in the persons of the intemperate." Dr. Harris, in an official report to the Secretary of the American Navy, states it as his opinion that the moderate use of spirituous liquors has destroyed many who were never drunk, and that no fact is more satisfactorily established, than that those who use them freely are the most exposed to the attacks of epidemic diseases. Dr. Cheyne makes the following observations :-" It is affirmed that an individual, in an unhealthy climate, while under the excitement produced by wine and spirits, is less liable to be acted upon by those exhalations from the soil, which taint the atmosphere and produce fevers and fluxes; but even granting the truth of this assertion, it must not be forgotten that the excitation produced by liquor is always followed by proportionate debility, during which the system is more than at any other time exposed to the action of a mal aria."*

« It

Dr. Trotter appears to be of the same opinion. ought to be remembered," says he, "that the exhausted condition of the body after inebriety, as much favours the action of marsh effluvium and infection, as its excited condition resisted it before. It is in this state that the fevers of tropical climates so readily seize our seamen and soldiers in the West Indies; the typhus contagion of this country is also extended in a similar manner."+

Dr. Mussey corroborates the same views :-" To a place among preventives of diseases, spirituous drinks. can present but the most feeble claims. If under occasional drinking during the period of alcoholic excitement, a temporary resistance may be given to those morbid influences which bring acute disease, be it occasional or epidemic, that excitement, by the immutable laws of vital

* A Second Letter on the Effects of Wines and Spirits. 1830. Essay on Drunkenness.

P. 17.

action, is necessarily followed by a state of relaxation, depression, or collapse, in which the power of resistance is weakened, and this, too, in proportion to the previous excitement. In order, therefore, to obtain from alcoholic stimulus anything like a protective influence against the exciting causes of disease, the exposure to those causes must be periodical, precisely corresponding with the stage of artificial excitation. If, however, such accuracy adjustment between the vital powers of vital resistance artificially excited, and the unhealthy agencies which tend to produce disease be wholly impracticable, then the danger must be increased by resorting under any circumstances to spirit as a preservative; and if not, other articles would do as well."

of

A careful perusal of these unanimous testimonials, leads us to inquire how far they are borne out by experience and observation? The facts which have been collected on this subject are strong and conclusive.

The cholera, perhaps, presents an appropriate illustration of these statements, as well as the most ample field of inquiry. It is not necessary for our present purpose to prosecute an inquiry as to the contagious or non-contagious nature of this direful disease; it is sufficient to know, that it has visited almost every portion of the globe, and under every variety of climate. The facts are universally conclusive, that spirituous liquors, even when moderately used, have been in the highest degree favourable to the development and propagation of this disease. This observation, it must be remarked, as the following illustrations testify, is the result of experience in all parts of the world, whether in extreme temperatures of hot or cold.

In England the cholera made most appalling ravages among the ranks of the intemperate. A volume might be filled with facts of this kind. The Morning Herald of that period thus remarks on this fact:"The same preference for the intemperate and uncleanly has characterized the cholera everywhere. Intemperance is a qualification which it never overlooks. Often has it passed harmless over a wide population of temperate country people, and poured down, as an overflowing scourge, upon the drunkards of some distant town." Another English